12p 20240229_01 I81 new outburst denis buczynski (29 Feb 2024 21:28 UTC)
Re: [BAA Comets] 12p 20240229_01 I81 new outburst Nick James (29 Feb 2024 22:20 UTC)

Re: [BAA Comets] 12p 20240229_01 I81 new outburst Nick James 29 Feb 2024 22:20 UTC
Thanks to Denis and Mark Phillips of the Astronomical Society of
Edinburgh for detecting this latest outburst. Attached is the latest
lightcurve. I don't have Mark's observations yet.

Richard Miles measured some images taken by Eliot Herman using
iTelescope T19 on Feb 29.11 showing the comet at mag 10.3 in 9 arcsec.
so the outburst occurred sometime earlier today.

We have a really good dataset on this comet now. Thanks to everyone who
has contributed. I also attach the full lightcurve going back to last
summer. Data prior to November is a bit sparse so I'd gladly receive
photometry using the standard settings if you want to measure your old
images on a cloudy night.

The latest outburst magnitude from Denis is almost, but not quite, the
brightest that the comet has been in a 9 arcsec aperture. It was
actually a little bit brighter at the outburst back in November and it
was much further from the Sun then. You can see that the trend magnitude
fits the baseline observations quite well until recently.

What will it do over the next few months? Only observing it will answer
that question.

I would be nice if Denis could send some of his clear skies down to us
in the south.

Nick.

On 29/02/2024 21:28, denis buczynski - buczynski8166 at btinternet.com
(via baa-comet list) wrote:
> Hello all,
> Attached is my image taken tonight 20240229_01 at Tarbatness Highland
> Scotland MPC Code I81 showing the new outburst of this comet. Magnitude
> in a 9 sec aperture is 9.6 tonight an increase of 0.7 magnitude since 2
> nights ago.